Thursday, 13 March 2014

Ugandan Benefits Cheats Must Repay Over £1.6M They Defrauded From Taxpayers

A notorious benefits fraudster, whose eighteen-year scam financed a property empire in her native Uganda, was ordered today to repay £1,512,344 or spend an additional six years in prison.

Ruth Nagubuzi, 50, (pic.top) was the head of the "family business" and is currently serving a six-year sentence after pleading guilty to twenty-eight counts.

Up to 100 fake children's identities were created to cheat even more money from the Department of work and Pensions and Nagubuzi also claimed to have HIV and Aids to obtain free medicine, which she sold in Africa for huge profits.

Those drugs, which were also prescribed to four other fictitious patients, cost the UK taxpayer over £2 million alone and another £154,000 went on education for the scammers.

She controlled fifteen different properties in the UK, sub-letting them to immigrants while receiving housing benefit payments totalling £650,000 and the 'family's' child benefit, disability benefit, council tax and tax credits bill was £900,000.

The rent from the tenants of those overcrowded properties netted her approximately £756,000.

Nagubuzi, of Manor Park, east London used her illegal profits to finance the construction of two complex's in her home town of Kampala, the 'Bulaga' and 'Zana' which incorporated hotels, restaurants and a shopping centre.

"What she ran was a large scale thriving business and had almost unlimited access to false identification," said Croydon Crown Court Judge Nicholas Ainley today.

Nagubuzi claimed to have only been motivated to help her fellow-countrymen and women - many of them orphans - to start a new life in the UK, but the judge dismissed this announcing: "She was running a large scale business for gain."

The prosecution have failed to identify her assets in this country, but Judge Ainley added: "She is perfectly capable of hiding money away. How much has gone to Uganda? I don't know.

"There are strong grounds to suggest she has access to very substantial assets in Uganda."

Beside her in the dock was fellow-fraudster Dennis Kyeyune, 30, (pic.bottom) who received thirty months imprisonment in November, 2012 and he was ordered to repay £157,791 or spend an additional two-and-a-half years in prison.

"I do not even know if this is his true identity," said Judge Ainley, describing the defendant as someone who worked closely with Nagubuzi and was involved in the export of luxury vehicles, such as Mercedes and BMW's to Uganda.